Monday, 1 March 2010

Polls - Which to Believe?

Poll results have been the life blood of the press in the past couple of days. The Times today headlines 'Salmond's ratings slump as Brown stages revival'.

An Ipsos MORI survey of more that 1000 Scots reveals that the First Minister's voter satisfaction ratings are down by 9% from six months ago, while the Prime Minister's have risen by 9% in the same period and are now slightly ahead of the SNP leader.

The poll also shows that the SNP, on 32% support, are now 2% behind Labour on 34% - a direct reversal of MORI's findings only three months ago.

If the evidence from the poll is rather sobering for Mr Salmond, it is positively gloomy for the Scottish Conservatives with still no sign of a 'Cameron bounce' in Scotland. The tories are trailing third place on 17% with the libdems still further behind on 12%.

Nicola Sturgeon described the poll findings as "fantastic". She added: "We are neck-and-neck with Labour in Westminster voting intentions and we have a substantial 7-point lead in Scottish Parliament voting intentions."

Overall for me that's not a bad result for the SNP. Why so many feel Gordon Brown is a capable Prime Minister defeats me. Regardless of who is the government in Westminster after the general election, the country will begin to see the destruction 13 years of a labour government has done. The worst is yet to come. Labour are using every trick in their armoury to suppress the reality of the situation but they won't be able to do that forever.

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comments:

Morning voter. I don't study polls, just glance at them so I appreciate your information. Have to admit MORI is reputable but YouGov somehow are perhaps biased. I applied online a few years ago to YouGov saying SNP and all I've ever had is requests for household product assessments.

In the face of the relentless media onslaught on the SNP, Kenny MacAskill and Megrahi, Roseanna Cunningham and the Balmoral paths, Fiona Hyslop and education, Mike Russell and the Universality of Cheese blog, Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond on selling lunch dates for party funds, Nicola Sturgeon's letter to the court and now Alex Salmond talking to STV it's not surprising that Alex Salmond's popularity has dropped. The, "shock, horror", stories in the press all come to nothing but the damage sticks. There has also been a deliberate attempt by the press to "humanise" Brown with his Piers Morgan interview which brought his family to the forefront of his political fightback.

It has been allied with a relentless narrative in the press that the SNP support is dropping and that Alex Salmond is floundering in Government. The press know that the public likes a winner and little facts like the Ipso-Mori poll will be discarded to suit the storyline that Alex Salmond is a loser.

well, polling agencies are got and that's ignoring how polls are manipulated for a special interest narrative. I mean they co-opted the ratings agencies and regulators to lie about the economy so co-opting polling organisations doesn't require a big leap of the imagination. They also lie about economic statistics and use committees and inquiries to lie about wars and corruption. And how they went about losing voters registers leaves chilling speculation of intel services involvement..

These people will stoop low and are not to be considered as democrats. They are corrupt, warmongers megalomaniacs whom the electorate needs rid of, IMHO.

You are right, after the election we'll see the result of their practices!

Since politics generally is the mist of promises emanating from the bottomless pit of failure, what makes these polls so believable?

We have governments who lie, parliaments who fail to hold them to account, representatives who contrive to defraud those they supposedly represent and all of it distorted by a media that's caught in the centrifuge of global corporate spin. So what guarantee do we, the gullible peasants, haveof the integrity of these polls. Who, after all's said and done, commissions and employs these pollsters?

We know lies are part of our daily propaganda diet, why allow the polls a validity above that of a tipster employed by a bookmaker?

For my money I think this GE is going to see all the dirty tricks being plucked out of the bag. Labour will have learnt all the lessons from the Republican/Bush elections 1&2. We can only hope their opponents have strategies on hand to oppose and expose these tricks.

The sad part of all this is, at a time when so much trust is needed, there's so little that can be trusted.

Actually in the UK pollsters reveal not only what questions they asked but the order they ask them in (more important than you might think--changing the order can drastically change the results)

Polling is a rather geekoid subject involving a lot of math involving margin of error and weighting.

Heavens, many people are not even aware that the percentage that the pollsters SAY answered one way or another is changed depending on weighting such as how many give a certain political ID and that this varies from one pollster to another.

Anyone who wants to learn more about polling might go over to UK Polling Reports where the polling anoraks tend to hang out and post. The posts are pretty strictly moderated to keep them on polling topics and off political rants.